There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.
Yup, i've worked long enough with senior mgmt to know that anything of interest for prosecution won't be written down, especially not on company devices. Those making the mistakes of writing things down are those actually prosecuted, the ranks and files.
I was told to do something that was a crime by my line level manager at a tech company when I was only a few years in my career, with code that he hand wrote and wanted me to type in and commit under my name.
When I refused he called me into a 1:1 and verbally told me I would be losing my job if I didn’t and only backed off when I told him he was never getting that paper back and asked if he wanted to go HR right now at which point I would be going to legal and didn’t care if I lost my job as long as he was implicated.
Only time in my career it’s happened, but it happens.
In my own experience, the brass sets the culture and expectations that encourage department heads to break the law. Certainly there are done CEOs explicitly commanding people to do crime, but it's more common to tell people to, eg, move fast, focus on profits, and do whatever needs to get done.
If anyone in leadership asks me to do anything that I find personally concerning, I'll write an email asking them to confirm that's what they want me to do.
That's why the burden of proof needs to shift and our thinking about responsibility needs to shift. Your liability should increase in parallel with the benefits you derive from your position. If you are getting rich from running ebay then you will lose that wealth when something like this happens; it doesn't matter whether you directed it or even knew about it; you don't get to get rich if bad things happen while you are in charge.
"You take care of it." means "Murder him and dump the body into a building foundation."
"I don't see any problems." can mean "The ambush will happen at the scheduled time. Vinnie will clean up the bodies."
etc.
You'll also see a lot of politicians using "dog whistle" statements, that are interpreted by listeners to mean something entirely different from the stated words.
That's assuming they're wiretapped. For corporate comms, just remember that email is discoverable while video calls typically aren't even retained. Be as explicit as you want, especially if you can rope a lawyer into the call and claim it's privileged.
I'm not a lawyer, but isn't RICO meant to give a way to prosecute those who are at the top of organizations that have people committing crimes like this?
But it's mind-boggling that any subordinate couldn't understand that such levels of depravity and insanity could land them in legal trouble, and that's besides the ethical issue.
Cush consulting jobs after the fact. You don’t burn your social network unless the alternate is serious jail time. Given the slaps on the wrists described, clearly the after conviction pay day is more valuable.
This is well before most HN readers' time, but Michael Milken, the "Junk Bond King," was handed a $600,000,000 fine and a ten-year prison sentance for insider trading and racketeering. He was also barred from reëntering the securities industry. When he was released from prison after serving less than two years, he became a "consultant" charging a flat $25 million fee for his services, which avoided the ban on working in the securities industry.
Trump pardoned him in 2020. Consequences are incredibly elastic for people at the top of the food chain.
If executives were at any risk of facing repercussions for their negligence, greed or outright villainy, I suspect fewer people would aspire to become one or remain one for very long.
